This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Conn Coll chapter.
With the recent explosion of other social media websites, Facebook has received a large wave of public demands for a more “emotion-friendly” website. The “like” button, to some, is restricting. At Q&A sessions, many have expressed that the like button is not suitable to express a range of emotions. The idea of this “dislike” button has been brought up before; however, the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, has expressed that he and the company feel if they only introduce a dislike button it will cause the negativity on the site. Instead, they hope to introduce a series of buttons that can be used by Facebook users to express a range of emotions. These buttons for emotions are called “Reactions” so users can express their reaction to a post in a more positive way than a dislike button. There is actually no dislike expression so negativity is not an issue.
The new options for emotion are: Classic Like, Love, Haha, Yay, Wow, Sad and Angry. With the several options, Facebook hopes that these new buttons will help users express a range of emotions with regards to different content that is shared on the website.
Chris Cox, the Chief Product Officer at Facebook, has announced via his Facebook page that the company has launched a test of these reaction buttons in both Spain and Ireland. Facebook is going to follow users and get a sense from users if they like the newest features as well as strongly encourage feedback from those who have used them.